MAY 3, 1999:
"I'm a bare walls kind of person," says George Barnes--an odd
statement from an artist who, with his partner Allen Hale, creates works of
pure metallic whimsy. Barnes and Hale are folk artists, and they have the
credentials to prove it. Neither has extensive art training. They work only
with materials they find on hand. They make objects they like before they
wonder if someone else will like them, too.

The two artists rarely leave their rural home, except when they
run low on the barbecue, Mountain Dew, and cigarettes they need for
sustenance. They do not venture out. They have few friends. Only recently
did they get power and running water.

Barnes and Hale have simplified life in ways which some might find
eccentric. But they don't care. They have found a lifestyle suited to a
single purpose: creating art.

They have the folk artist's eye--that ability to see form and beauty in
a bunch of scrap metal someone else has thrown away. The duo shows
undisguised disdain for many of the artists in the folk art category. With
one eyebrow arched, Barnes scoffs, "Some people call themselves folk
artists and they put everything they do together with power tools. If you
ask me, a folk artist should be able to go out into a field with nothing
and come back with something. Just about everything we do can be done
anywhere, without anything but a butter knife, a hammer, a nail, and tin
snips."

Barnes, nattily attired in pressed khaki shorts, cotton sweater, and a
beret, and Hale, wearing worn dungarees and a T-shirt, are sitting on a
contemporary leather sofa at Outside The Lines, the Belle Meade gallery
that carries their angels, fish, mobiles, bugs, birds, sheep, llamas, and
anything else they fashion out of metal scraps. The reclusive partners have
reluctantly agreed to speak about their lives and their work to a stranger,
which would be anyone outside of their immediate circle, an intimate party
of about five, not including their families.

Barnes and Hale look at the world outside the one they have fashioned
with a wary eye. Barnes is huddled up on one side of a large, black dog;
Hale is snug up against the other side. The dozing canine appears to offer
them some sense of security. They have come to town in their battered
pickup truck to deliver more pieces to gallery owner Robin Cohn, whom they
count as one of their very few, and very dearest, friends.

Photo by Susan Adcock

The pair shows up several times a week, Cohn says, sometimes as often as
daily, to deliver new work. A few months ago, she found them on the front
step of her home, ready to help out after her recent back surgery.
Sometimes she finds them in her back yard, ready to offer their assistance
on outdoor projects. "I never know when they're going to come or what
they're going to bring. I just take everything they bring me. Right now,
they're in a fishing mode, so we have lots of fish things."

Since Cohn's gallery opened and she began representing them in late
1997, Barnes and Hale have become her biggest sellers. She is convinced
they have what it takes to become nationally recognized, exhibited, even
collected. A local collector sent Bill Ivey, chairman of the National
Endowment for the Arts, a Barnes/Hale piece for Christmas.

But fame and fortune will have to look hard for George Barnes and Allen
Hale. Until recently, the two led a life of near complete isolation, in a
rundown farmhouse in Pegram. They now live in Portland. They do not court
callers--not even Cohn. They figure they have about four or five friends
between them. They spend their days driving backcountry roads, searching
alleys, and rummaging dumps for discarded materials they can rework into
art.

"You'd be surprised," says Hale, "at what you can find in a dump. We
ride through alleys and country roads. We have our special spots. We've
gotten old gutters, down spouts, old tractors, just about anything. You
should see our reject pile." Their chosen medium could easily be
interpreted as a metaphor for their lives--two admitted misfits who have
rejected conventional wisdom and metamorphosed into artists.

Growing Bonsai

Allen Hale, 29, was born in Michigan, but moved to a farm in
Liberty, Tenn. with his parents, brother, and two sisters when he was a
teenager. "It was a working farm until we found out it wasn't going to
work," he laughs. "Then we moved to town, but not much of one. There wasn't
anything there." He was interested in art and learned to paint oils,
acrylics, and watercolors in weekly lessons with Betty Jo Smotherman in
Smithville.

Whatever gifts Hale exhibited then weren't enough to lead him to believe
he could make a living as an artist, so he first followed a more
traditional route to success. He studied at Vanderbilt, MTSU, and ITT,
becoming an electronics engineer. He designed computer programs for the
federal government for a few years. In his spare time, he made artificial
bonsai trees, then tried the real thing. "I had to kill a bunch of them to
learn how to do it. The best one I've got now is an American Cedar. It's
about the hardest bonsai to raise. It's almost 10 years old and still in a
4-inch pot."

When Hale decided he wasn't cut out to be a government man, he started a
landscape business before opening a floral shop in LaVergne with a partner
and lover. He had, he says, "made a life for myself."

George Barnes, 30, is one of 17 children in a combined family. His
mother had five children in her first marriage, his father seven in his.
Barnes is the third of five in the third set. His identical twin brother is
a mechanic.

Raised in and around Madison, Barnes began drawing after a kindergarten
teacher handed him an orange crayon and told him to color in a circle.

"I went to town with that crayon. I know that art has always been inside
of me." He started high school at Whites Creek, but dropped out in the
ninth grade when the school wouldn't allow him to take his elective in art.
"They stuck me in music," he says, raising an eyebrow again. "I still
carried my art into the art teacher's class, but I couldn't take her class.
That wasn't right. So I left." He eventually got his GED, but to make a
living he began cooking.

When he was 18, he was working the afternoon shift at the Charlotte Pike
Waffle House and met a waitress there on the night shift. "I always cleaned
up and made things nice for her when she came in. I could tell she liked
me. She was always making eyes at me across the counter." She was 39 years
old, her parents had recently died, and she was living alone in their
Pegram farmhouse. Barnes was living with his uncle and tired of it. "We
were both lonely. We married for companionship," he says. "Not for
love."

Three years ago, Hale and Barnes met at a party in East Nashville. "We
stayed up all night talking," Barnes remembers. "I knew right then that we
would be together," says Hale. "That very night I gave up my flower shop
and my partner. George and I have been together ever since."

Hale moved into the farmhouse with Barnes and Barnes' wife, who, despite
the platonic nature of the spousal relationship, was not enamored of the
arrangement and moved out shortly after. Their first artistic collaboration
was Indian jewelry and dream catchers. "We bought feathers and beads
because they were cheap," says Hale. "If you can bead, you can make Indian
jewelry." Their retail operation was set up on the side of Highway 70, on a
concrete slab that was all that was left of a store Hale's father used to
run.

One day, a friend brought a truckload of heating and air conditioning
metal duct to the farm. The two looked at the tin, cut it into sections,
bent it, turned it, put a roof on top, and called it a bird house. They
priced them at $5 and hung them up on the clothesline beside the dream
catchers.

"Things that hang, that was key," Barnes says. "That, and the price.
Everything was $5. We'd $5 people to death. All we needed was $15 a day--$5
for food, $5 for two six-packs of Mountain Dew, and $5 for cigarettes.
People ask what our inspiration is. I tell them you can't beat starvation
for inspiration."

The bird houses sold well, becoming larger and more elaborate. The
partners began looking at metal in a new light. They began making pieces
out of whatever they could find. A torn down barn was the genesis for their
signature work--tin angels.

"Old barns are a great place to find material," says Hale. "George went
over and picked up a piece of rusty old tin and started bending it. The
next thing you know, it was an angel." They began visiting stores and
galleries in the area, looking for someone to buy their angels.

"We had people laugh right in our face," says Barnes. "But then we met
Robin and she liked our work. So we bring her everything."

Cohn says they just walked in the door one day and wanted to show her
their work. She went out to their truck and told them she'd take whatever
they made--a deal the two artists have never refused.

"I sell everything they bring me," she says. "Their work isn't just
something you hang on a wall or put on your mantel. People like to touch
it, to see how it works. Their work is a discussion piece. And it brings
such joy to people. Children love their work as much as serious collectors.
I think it's because the two of them are so childlike themselves."

Degree of Fame

Barnes and Hale have a prodigious output, particularly
considering the living and working environment they choose.

When an ice storm knocked out the electricity in the farmhouse some
winters ago, and codes would not approve the wiring, Barnes simply decided
he could live without it. A few years ago, he decided he didn't need water
utilities. The couple had a telephone for a little while until someone
called at 3 a.m. two nights in a row. They had their phone service cut off
the next day.

"I don't mind using 35 cents to call someone when I need to," says
Barnes. "We don't call very many people and now we don't have to answer a
phone and talk to anyone we don't want to. I'm thinking about getting a
beeper. That way, if I want to call somebody back I can and if not, I can
just say I forgot to turn it on."

At the Pegram farmhouse, they collected rainwater and had a cistern. A
wood burning stove provided heat and a generator powered one light in the
kitchen and a small television so they could catch their favorite shows:
Star Trek, Nova, and Jerry Springer.

"I can feel pretty good about myself when I see the problems those
people have," says Hale. "Living without electricity started out as an
inconvenience. But I'm a better person for having learned I can live
without it."

About a month ago, Barnes' divorce became final, and his ex-wife got the
Pegram farmhouse back as part of the settlement. Barnes was familiar with
the Portland area, having lived there for a while when he was in junior
high. He knew there were some retail and business spaces on the old Highway
52 that had been empty since the new Highway 52 was built. He and Hale
recently moved into an old grist mill. It's one big room with a separate
bath, running water, and even electricity. They've painted the interior
walls terra cotta, and the woodwork a cobalt blue. They still have no
refrigeration or stove, so they go to the grocery store in their battered
pickup truck once a day for canned barbecue (Sweet Sue is their favorite
brand), sardines, cookies, Mountain Dew, and cigarettes. Someone gave them
a toaster when they moved and once in a while they toast a piece of bread.
Another house gift, a crock pot, has yet to be plugged in.

Barnes and Hale argue about which one of them will go into the market,
as neither one much enjoys interaction with strangers, no matter how
necessary. A big night out might be a trip to Burger King or a movie, but
only if the theater is empty enough that they don't have to sit close to
anyone else. They've been known to leave before the feature starts. They
have unique but disciplined work habits as well.

"We each work on our own things, but we help each other when we need
it," says Hale. "It can be a real battle though."

They spend about 60-70 hours a week in their studio, the walls of which
are covered with patterns and sketches and drawings. "I don't even know
what some of them are, there's so many. We start working when we get up.
Then we work until we're tired," Hale explains. "We do at least one piece a
day, but sometimes we do 30. It depends. We're pretty selective about what
takes up our day. Now that we don't have to depend on the sun for light, we
can work later at night."

In the relative hullabaloo of Portland, they do have to contend with
neighbors now. Barnes' grandmother still lives there and has told friends
about her grandson-the-artist and his work. A mural of two mules pulling a
wagon that Barnes painted on the exterior wall, as well as an 11-foot tin
dragon hanging outside the studio also announce their presence. There's
still no welcome mat at the front door.

"I hung a cow bell on the gate so I'd know when someone was coming. It's
our privacy fence. We keep the doors shut almost all the time, but people
still came by and knocked. That's died down a lot now. They were just
curious, I guess, and now they pretty much leave us alone if the doors are
closed."

The artists have found new sources for material in their new home as
well. The rural location provides plenty of fallen-down barns. The Home
Depot in Rivergate is a little farther than they care to drive in an area
more congested than they like, but the local hardware store is happy to
order the wire they need.

Their dream is to eventually get a large bus and make it into a mobile
studio. Then they would travel the country, find materials along the way,
set up wherever they felt like stopping, and bring their work to the
public. When they were ready to leave, they could just pack up and be on
the road for as long as the Mountain Dew, Sweet Sue, and cigarettes held
out.

They give plenty of thought to where their work might take them. "People
like our metal work," says Hale. "It's fascinating for them to see us turn
a piece of junk into something. And we're accessible to a lot of people. We
want to be available to every customer, from a working man to a
neurosurgeon. Because of the way we live, there's no pressure on us right
now. But I worry about what might happen if we got well-known or famous.
Then people make a lot of demands on you and your time. I wouldn't want
that."

Barnes, on the other hand, thinks a certain degree of fame wouldn't be a
bad thing.

"We have everything we need right now," he says. "I just want to get
where I'm going with my metal, wherever that takes me. I'd rather be famous
than rich, because I want to be remembered. When people think of me, I want
them to think of me as an artist."